NPR's Melissa Block speaks with Pieter Tans of the NOAA

NPR's Melissa Block speaks with Pieter Tans of the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Laboratory about
greenhouse gas emissions surpassing 400 parts per million
http://www.npr.org/2015/05/08/405260...each-milestone

BLOCK: Now, when we say that this is a threshold that hasn't been
reached for millions of years, how do you assess what carbon dioxide
levels would have been in the air millions of years ago?

TANS: Well, the first is bubbles of air locked up in very ancient ice
in Greenland and Antarctica, in particular. But there's additional
information from sediments on the bottom of the Atlantic and the
Pacific oceans that lets us conclude that CO2 was not as high as it
is today. We have to go back approximately three to four-million
years to have CO2 levels that high.


BLOCK: Now, wouldn't some people say though that if this same level
was reached three or four million years ago, that that indicates
climate change isn't man-made, this happened before?

TANS: Well, yes, climate has changed before dramatically. In most
cases though, the pace of that was very, very slow. What is really
special about modern times is that human activity on the geologic
time scale is like an explosion.


BLOCK: How troubling is this new record number of carbon dioxide
concentration in the atmosphere - 400 parts per million?

TANS: What troubles me is that we're still headed at full speed in a
direction that we should not be going. We are at the beginning of
bringing about huge changes in the Earth's climate and ecosystems.
The potential is there for us to make life hard, really, for future
generations.


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On Monday, May 11, 2015 at 4:50:15 PM UTC+1, Sam Wormley wrote:
NPR's Melissa Block speaks with Pieter Tans of the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Laboratory about
greenhouse gas emissions surpassing 400 parts per million
http://www.npr.org/2015/05/08/405260...each-milestone

The quality of climate research rests on the ability to look at other planets and decipher the common traits which define what type of climate a planet has.

I am sure you will always get a hearing from those who have similar lifestyles with focus on exhaust fumes and the atrocious belief that humans can control the planet's temperature but nobody really discusses the foundation of climate based on the degree of inclination between 0 Degrees and 90 Degrees which covers all planets within the solar system. It has nothing to do with the distance from the Sun nor the daily and orbital periods of a planet, a proper definition of climate is how the surface across latitudes respond over half a planet's orbit.

The Earth has a largely Equatorial climate but with a sizable polar input ,Uranus has an almost total polar climate while Jupiter has essentially an Equatorial climate due to their respective inclinations.

Trying to whip people into a frenzy using a minor atmospheric gas is hardly competition for a balanced narrative for climate research and the opportunistic attempt to extend weather forecasting via computer modeling to latitudinal conditions.

Of course you come from a community which professes with glee that there are 366 1/4 rotations to one orbital circumference and that in itself is heartbreaking for our species and if it isn't then it should be.